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Gunslinger Girl
Gunslinger Girl is a 2006 action/drama film directed by Giuseppe Tornatore and starring Emma Watson, Bonnie Wright, Alexa Vega, Chisaki Hama, and Katie Lucas. Cast Trivia *Giuseppe Tornatore is notorious for enforcing method acting from the six female leads in the film in his zeal for realism. However, to avoid the film being labeled as a snuff film, he took every precaution to avoid their deaths, to the point of having medical personnel on the set. For example, when Henrietta's parents are gunned down, the stuntpeople portraying them, Jeannie Epper and Clay Cullen, wore bulletproof vests. Emma Watson was scheduled for mutilation, and Tornatore allegedly informed her that special effects would be used for that scene. Instead, the stuntman playing the thug, Frank Orsatti, stabbed her repeatedly on camera. The first thing she did when she regained consciousness an hour later, after receiving treatment, was slap Tornatore HARD on the face. However, the affair never strained their relationship. In fact, they worked together several more times. *One of few films since 1983 to use full opening credits. The sequels also used full opening credits, with the only word being displayed at the end being "FINE", Italian for "THE END". *According to Emma Watson, a remark by Olga (Cate Blanchett) in one scene about how the girls at Section 2 would make excellent ballerinas takes on a double meaning when you realize that one of the actresses, Bonnie Wright (who plays Rico), takes ballet in real life. Emma then went on to remark that Bonnie practiced often during production while still in one of her costumes from the film. *Emma Watson sometimes recorded the goings-on of the cast and crew on a camcorder. *One of several films where Bonnie Wright bleached her hair blond for her part. *One of several Emma Watson films affected by her fallout with 20th Century Fox. In March 2010, four year after its original release, Disney and Lionsgate rereleased the film theatrically replacing the Fox logo with their own, placing the credit "A CINEMASCOPE PICTURE IN CINEMASCOPE 55" over the very first shot of the film, the Fox credit at the end being removed, and a superimposed '50s Buena Vista logo appearing before "FINE" instead. *One of few films since the '50s to be filmed in CinemaScope 55. *Early on in production, newspapers around the world reported that Emma Watson had actually died from her injuries sustained during the shoot for the pre-credits sequence. After Emma read her own obituary in one Italian paper the day after the incident (in which she actually lost an arm and a leg), she remarked, "That's a good story, but it's a false story," and then called the newspaper in question to confirm she wasn't dead. The next day, all the newspapers that had carried the erroneous report printed a retraction. *After Emma Watson's arm and leg were chopped off during the opening assault scene, she received realistic prosthetics that not only made her look normal but also allowed her to function normally again. Her original arm and leg, as well as the prosthetics she has outgrown, are currently on display at her American home in Encino, California. At the premiere for this film, she expressed how everyone who saw her would be hard-pressed to know she had lost two limbs during the shoot for the film. When everyone laughed, she shot back, "You think I'm kidding? I'll show you!" and after sitting down, she pulled off the prosthetic limbs, shocking all who saw. After putting her prosthetic limbs back on, she remarked, "Well, anyway, these limbs are superior to other prosthetics I know have been used in that they allow me to continue walking normally, even at high speeds. Even with a prosthetic right arm, I'm still a good draw when it comes to gunslinging." Emma also said that she removes her prosthetic limbs every night before she goes to bed. *When she was cast as Rico, Bonnie Wright barely knew any Italian despite working with Emma on another Italian film, Sailor Moon, a few years before production on this film began. (Emma helped her memorize her lines in the previous film and its sequels.) Since Bonnie's part this time was more major, though, Emma was hard-pressed to help her learn Italian for the part, and other Italian-speaking cast and crew members helped teach her Italian. By the end of the summer of 2005, she was just about as fluent in Italian as Emma was, and as a way of showing she knew the language, she and Emma tended to converse in Italian. *Aside from Bonnie Wright, Alexa Vega, Chisaki Hama, and Katie Lucas all learned Italian from Emma, Giuseppe Tornatore, and other crew members. *Like some recent films, this film has the feel of an R-rated movie yet carries a PG-13 rating. *Emma Watson did target practice once a day in her free time, as did the rest of the actresses playing Section 2 girls. *The VHS release is letterboxed. *During the promotion tour in America, Emma Watson finally received adequate compensation from Giuseppe Tornatore for her mutilation in the form of a precert copy of Cannibal Holocaust that he had found in a used video store in Los Angeles. *During the shooting of an action scene involving Bonnie Wright, Giuseppe Tornatore yelled at a stuntman for not hitting her shoulder. This frightened Bonnie, and so Emma asked Australian cinematographer John Seale to position the camera so that she wouldn't be seen holding Bonnie's hand. First, though, Bonnie had to be filmed putting her gun in her other hand. Emma gripped Bonnie's hand tight, and Tornatore yelled, "Action!" Within a second, a bullet grazed Bonnie's shoulder. She reportedly thanked Emma for being by her side. Miraculously, when the medics did X-rays of her, they found no sign of nerve damage, leading Emma to remark, "You're nearly as impervious as I am!" Bonnie reportedly liked the remark. Release See also: Gunslinger Girl home video releases The film premiered at the Olympic Stadium in Rome on March 1, 2006. The film was released in Italy on March 15, 2006 and internationally on March 21, 2006. The film is rated PG-13 "for intense action violence and thematic material". The film was released on home video on July 11, 2006. Following Emma Watson's fallout with 20th Century Fox over the Watchmen case, the film's rights were picked up by Walt Disney Pictures and Lionsgate Films, who rereleased the film on March 12, 2010 as part of Disney's "Gunslinger Girl Rerelease Project". Incidentally, while most theatre chains showed this film, only one of those, Emma's own Grindhouse Cinemas actually committed to showing the next four films at its locations. The last two films in the series were released simultaneously in regular theatres and Grindhouse Cinemas locations. On network television, some of the more violent scenes are censored for a TV-14 rating. Cable networks, on the other hand, air it uncut with a TV-MA rating. The uncut version, released on home video at the same time as the theatrical version, adds some blood in the pre-credits scene as well as some footage of violence, including a version of the hotel job with alternate takes, and was originally rated NC-17 "for graphic violence involving children". Due to the Watchmen case, the rating was appealed, and the uncut version was re-rated R "on appeal for graphic violence throughout". In the UK, this was rated 18. In Australia, it was rated R18+. This makes it one of few PG-13-rated films in the United States to receive an adults-only rating abroad in an uncut version.